Vicenza

Vicenza

Our hotel was located about 5km outside of Vicenza, so our bus driver offered to drive us into town for the night to explore. There is not much in Vicenza. The buildings are pretty and there is a small Olympic Arena there, but it was closed.  Most of the girls took this opportunity to do a little shopping. Amanda and I kind of went off on out own and saw some Piazzas and the Duomo in Vicenza.  We all met back at the bus around 9ish and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we left to go see Villa Rotunda, which is located outside of Vicenza.  Designed by Palladio, Villa Rotunda is a completely symmetrical building with identical facades on all 4 sides.  We all learned about it in our history of Architecture classes our first two years.  I was slightly disappointed with Villa Rotunda. After learning about something for so long, you build up anticipation for it and the expectations were just not met.  It was pretty, yes.  But the surrounding area was just not as landscaped as I thought it would have been.  The inside of the building was very pretty.  There were beautiful ceilings and excellent detailings.  After exploring, we had an extra hour or so to kill so we all laid out and got some sun.

From Villa Rotunda, we traveled towards Venice and stopped at Brion Cemetery.  The Cemetery was designed by Carlo Scarpa, and follows one of his most famous motifs.  Scarpa uses the idea of addition and subtraction, push and pull, and his spaces are filled with a sense of contradiction.  I was very excited about seeing the Cemetery, again because I had studied him in school.  With out free time we took a second to take some awesome pictures in the portal!